A student’s plea

This time next year I will apply to medical school. Tuition fees are rising, and the number of applicants competing for a place is at an all time high. Each year about 70% of applicants get turned down first time around. The prospect is daunting. As a medical applicant, work experience is a concept more than just useful to me. Work experience is essential in making an informed decision as to whether I truly want to pursue a career in medicine. I recently spent a week at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead, shadowing plastic surgeons, burn specialists, nurses, and paediatricians, and I relished every moment. As I stood beside doctors while they treated the endless stream of patients, I realised that this is the life I want to lead. Summarising the week in a phrase would be impossible; it was the steepest learning curve I have experienced thus far. Intense and fascinating is the closest I can get. The opportunity opened my eyes to the best and worst aspects of the life of a doctor.

But the first step to becoming a doctor is, of course, the minor matter of actually getting into medical school. This is not a task for the fainthearted, and one major reason is that students are not able to secure enough work experience. Why is this? Places for work experience students at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, for example, are booked up for the next two years—too late for me when I applied.

Criminal Records Bureau forms and risk assessments all have their purpose but do not make matters easier. Additionally, those who have secured work experience and are eager to start are then subject to the NHS’s policy of restricting entry of students younger than 18 into operating theatres. The rationale for this is difficult to see. A 17 year old applicant is not vastly less mature or less capable of witnessing surgery, but it does make all the difference in gaining the requisite experience to make a better informed decision about embarking on a career that will take a minimum of seven years’ training. Where is the harm in vetted students discreetly standing in the corner of a theatre simply observing a medical procedure that involves a knife?

I managed to secure a supervised observer student role at one of India’s leading teaching hospitals in Mumbai, the King Edward Memorial Hospital, founded in 1926. It is a multi-specialty state hospital affiliated to the University of Mumbai. Each year 1.4 million patients attend its outpatient clinics; it has 1400 inpatient beds; and 60 000 major operations are conducted each year. There are 400 academic staff and 600 resident postgraduate doctors, and 180 undergraduates are admitted each year.

I had the great privilege of shadowing and observing a professor of ear, nose, and throat surgery. Obtaining this experience, although thousands of miles away across continents, was easy in comparison with what I had to cope with for far more restrictive work experience in the United Kingdom.

I would like to send out a plea to all doctors reading this. Wherever possible, given the pressures that you already bear, please try to make students like me who struggle to gain work experience with you easier and a little less tedious. My work experience was hugely beneficial. Though it was like a rollercoaster ride, terrifying at first but immensely thrilling afterwards, it was an education of infinite importance to me in deciding whether medicine really is worth the long period of hard work required. I wish more hopefuls will also gain the brief insight that only witnessing doctors’ work at first hand brings.